Battle Weary

Sometimes when God places you exactly where He wants you, it hits you in that moment.  Usually right in the tenderest places of your hearts.  It hit me today as I looked another stressed, worried mama in her teary eyes.  We were on a common battle field and I wanted to just wrap her in my arms and cry with her.  
Our family's could not be more different nor more the same.  A child on the Autism spectrum with some scary health challenges was weighing heavy on her heart as answers were anything but fast coming.  The normal bumps in the road of life, like a move, were almost unmanageable with the emotional turmoil of the unknown with her son.  

"We are completely isolated.  We basically have no friends any more. We don't even attend church.  It's just too hard."

The unspoken words were, "I am empty and there is no one to Here is help me pick up the pieces. No way to refill as I am still pouring out from the void that is becoming me."  

There are times when you look into another's eyes and see yourself.  You both know and often can finish each other's words but find you are too overwhelmed to speak.  You breathe in the comfort of the presence of someone who gets it, as most have no idea.  

A fellow warrior foster mama who has battled long and hard for the hearts and lives of children she will only raise for a season is one of my favorite people to see.  Because she always gets me.  She only has to hear about three words from my mouth before she nods and I know she is there with me.   

Our house has been "under construction" for over two years and there's still plenty more stretching into what seems like an endless future.  It's constant upheaval, and "where is this?  Oh, still in a box somewhere."  It's uncertainty and change for a family that is desperate for consistency and stillness.  

I dropped something off a while back to a family who has just expanded by 5 babes whose mother died of cancer.  They already had 5.  And how to stretch a house like God stretched their hearts to do this?  But they began.  As I was almost ready to leave, the mama pulled up.  She motioned to construction materials and workers, "This is just beginning and it's going to be going on for a long time.  HOW do you do this?"  In that moment we were both in this together.  

When people ask me "how I do it" referring to managing our chaos, I always say, "just one step at a time, one day at a time."  But the truth is, I don't know how I do it, because I don't do it well.  None of us do.  

The truth of me is I anger too quickly, I say no before the question is asked, I am tired beyond reckoning, and I'm more selfish that I ever thought possible. My inner thoughts are as ugly some days as my kids words when they are in a fight.    

But God.  He carries me. He brings us into each other's mess so we can nod in understanding and pull each other up one more time.